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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Cornel West used DuBois' work as a solution to a crisis in what?
(a) American literature.
(b) Confidence in modernism.
(c) International Marxism.
(d) American pragmatism.

2. What does Gilroy say slavery tried to do to tradition?
(a) Rewrite it.
(b) Erase it.
(c) Co-opt it.
(d) Compete with it.

3. What does Gilroy say is wrong with contemporary criticism of African-American literature?
(a) Over-polarized vocabulary.
(b) Relativism.
(c) Essentialism.
(d) Uncritical acceptance of all things primitive.

4. What does the Holocaust help us understood according to Gilroy?
(a) The black experience.
(b) Tolerance of cultural differences.
(c) Genocidal terror.
(d) Emotional indifference to suffering.

5. What ontological state does Gilroy say is the heart of many stories in black culture?
(a) The state of being in pain.
(b) The state of displacement from the self.
(c) The state of longing for self-expression and fulfillment.
(d) The state of nostalgia for home.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the last period of black history, according to DuBois, in The Souls of Black Folk?

2. What kinds of frameworks was DuBois trying to look beyond?

3. What do Jews and blacks fear from a discussion of the Holocaust and slavery?

4. What does music allow black culture to do with this feeling?

5. What did Richard Wright want to deprive white people of?

Short Essay Questions

1. What view of the black Atlantic does Paul Gilroy leave us with at the end of the book?

2. What does Gilroy say DuBois reminded blacks?

3. What idea was undermined, in Richard Wright's mind, by the violence of modern American culture?

4. Why was Wright criticized for his characterizations, according to Gilroy?

5. What origin legitimized Richard Wright in readers' eyes?

6. How does blackness function in DuBois' writing, as Gilroy describes it?

7. What were Richard Wright's politics?

8. Describe the role of the concept of tradition in the black Atlantic.

9. What distinction does Gilroy say Richard Wright holds?

10. Why, in Gilroy's opinion, is tradition useful in modern black culture?

(see the answer keys)

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